Muirfield Gets Its Day in the Sun

No Need for Umbrellas at This Year's British Open

By

John Paul Newport

July 16, 2013 7:08 p.m. ET

Gullane, Scotland

The last time Tiger Woods played in a British Open here at Muirfield, he carded his worst score ever as a professional: 81. That was 2002, when Woods was at his best. He had already won the Masters and the U.S. Open that year and was trying for the still-unachieved Grand Slam, winning all four modern majors in a calendar year.

ENLARGE

The last time the British Open was played at Muirfield in 2002, Tiger Woods finished 28th.
Associated Press

But Woods, after opening with rounds of 70 and 68, ran into a wee bit of bad luck with his Saturday tee time. A storm blew in.

"That was the worst I've ever played in," he recalled Tuesday. "The windchill was in the 30s. The umbrella became useless, because the wind was blowing so hard you couldn't control the umbrella. We played through maybe 13, 14 holes of it." All with just a golf shirt and rain jacket, because the forecast, as Woods remembers, had predicted merely the slight chance of a shower.

ENLARGE

Ernie Els won in a playoff the last time the British Open was played at Muirfield.
Reuters

He finished 28th. The winner in a four-man playoff was Ernie Els, who managed a 72 on Saturday in better conditions.

The forecasters could be wrong again this year, of course, but the current projection is for totally different conditions. If they are correct, Scotland's two-week spell of warm, dry, sunny weather will continue through the weekend. That doesn't necessarily mean Muirfield will play easier than it did in 2002, only that links golf will be presenting its other face: bounding, fiery fairways and rock-hard approaches into the greens.

And once again, Woods and Els are among the favorites. Woods because he's No. 1 in the world and has won four times already this year. Els because he won last year's Open at Royal Lytham & St. Annes and has stayed in good form since, with a victory last month on the European Tour and a tie for fourth at the U.S. Open.

Els practiced at Muirfield two weeks ago and was shocked when he returned this week at how much the course had hardened up. "The weather has been unbelievable. The course is getting firmer and firmer and faster," he said Monday. To illustrate: in one of his recent practice rounds, on the 377-yard third hole, he teed off conservatively with a three iron, hoping to keep the ball short of the pinching fairway bunkers 290 yards out. Instead, with just a "little breeze" behind it, the ball screamed off the fairway and well past the bunkers.

"Until you have actually played [Muirfield] in competition, you might not believe that the ball is going to go that far," he said.

Last weekend I was fortunate enough to play a few bone-dry Scottish links courses myself, and the degree of bounding was extraordinary. Think concrete. But Muirfield's fairways have a little less craziness to them than many links courses—fewer quirky hillocks and swales that send balls squirting off sideways or shooting 50 yards farther than anticipated. The players here are nearly universal in their love for the course.

Phil Mickelson, who won the Scottish Open at Castle Stuart last week and is another favorite, said Muirfield had been set up extremely fair. "Given the firmness of the fairways and as much as the ball is running, you have to have a little bit of room to maneuver and keep the ball in play, and the setup has allowed for that," he said.

Not only are the fairways reasonably wide, but the rough is subtly graduated. Twenty feet from the edge of the fairways, the brush is waist high and densely tangled at ground level with the vestiges of wet summers the last two years. Wild drives there will be duly penalized, with hack-outs back into play the only choice. Closer to the short grass, however, the fescue is much shorter and wispy and players in practice rounds are advancing the ball with no problem, albeit also with limited precision.

Unlike at some courses in the British Open rota, the dreaded, steep-faced potbunkers at Muirfield are mostly in logical places, defining the areas where players want to hit their drives, rather than sneakily plopped in the middle of them.

The last British Open course to be this baked out was Hoylake in 2006. Woods won that tournament by hitting his driver only once all week and maneuvering his ball around the course's bunkers like a chess grandmaster. He was coy Tuesday about whether he would use a driver this week—he said he'd only hit a couple in practice rounds—and also about whether his elbow was fully healthy. At the U.S. Open, he aggravated an elbow injury and hasn't played since. He said it's "good to go" now, but that he's playing only nine-hole practice rounds here to protect it from the hard turf.

Predicting a champion for any major is a bit of a fool's errand. Fourteen of the last 17 majors have been won by first-timers. But one has to root for Mickelson, coming off his devastating loss to Justin Rose at the U.S. Open last month and his confidence-building Scottish Open victory.

He hasn't fared well in British Opens—only two top 10s in 19 outings—even though the imaginative demands of links golf would seem to suit him. On Tuesday he said poor putting on the subtle fescue greens at Opens had been a big part of his underachievement but that recently he has "keyed in on something" in his putting (the details of which he did not care to share) and that now his putting is better than it's ever been. He said he had a "hate/love relationship" with the British Open: "I used to hate it and now I love it."

Graeme McDowell, with three wins in his last seven tournaments, is another to put money on. "I think the links style golf is in my blood," said the former U.S. Open champ from Northern Ireland. "I naturally and instinctually can play well in the wind."

McDowell's countryman, world No. 2 Rory McIlroy, is a cipher these days. He hasn't won since dominating both the PGA Tour and European Tour last year. U.S. Open champion Justin Rose, Masters champion Adam Scott? Dark horses Rickie Fowler, Jason Dufner, Matteo Manassero? Their chances are all as capricious as the bounces off Muirfield's turf.

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